Life, family and unshakeable faith

When I was 13 years old my mum and dad separated, leaving my sister and I living with my mum in a tiny apartment. Each Friday I negotiated between mum and dad a weekly support sum given by dad to mum to help raise us. I hated it.

I clearly remember sitting with mum on one side of Epping train station in Sydney while dad sat on the other. I would walk across the footbridge between them, back and forwards, communicating the terms of how much money mum would get for the week ahead.

At the age of 13, it seemed like dad was only providing for us, not out of love, but because of an unwilling obligation forced on him by mum. And I was mad at my mum that she couldn’t speak for herself and put me in the middle of them.

It’s only after decades have passed that I can see that I had drawn childish conclusions about both my mum and dad at that time. Those conclusions influenced reactions in my life, not only a fear during the early years of my marriage that Lenore would leave me suddenly, but also a difficulty in accepting help from others.

I grew up struggling to believe that when people did help it was out of love, not obligation.

I wonder what childish conclusions you may be living with to this day?

Today as a 55 year old who needs to rely more and more on the help of others, I now realise it was unfair of me to assume ill motives on others. There are people who are neither unwilling or under obligation that want to help and do help. I was the one with the issue.

Maybe like me, you need to acknowledge your own false conclusions.

What I now know is that my dad did love me and my mum was not using me. They had stuff going on in their lives that had nothing to do with me. My dad’s tough negotiating, for example, had more to do with his need for money to feed his addictions and pay his bills, not to mention his anger over mum leaving.

What about you? What childish conclusions about life and relationships are you living with?

Have false conclusions in your life stemmed from disappointments, from past experiences, or just incorrectly processing information?

Are you like me, reacting or responding to people and their actions from a dysfunctional mindset built upon false understandings and conclusions that have framed the way you now think?

You see, not only as adults do we need to put aside childish behaviours, but it may also be time to put away seeing life how a child sees life – recognising, there may be more to every story.

There is so much potential for our lives as we mature, not only in age, but in actions, and in how we perceive the world. I leave you with this verse today, 1 Corinthians 13:11:

“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.”